Another couple of good nights

Well after a long day of teaching and then having to teach a kindergarden class that I had to make up because I missed it, I hoked up with my friend Chris. I feel like I haven’t seen him in a decade or something. I was having lunch on Monday and I decided to call him and basically broke his arm and told him that he was meeting me and we’d go for dinner on Tuesday. Anyway, he met me at school just after my kindergarten class and we headed out to eat. We had so much catching up to do and he was really happy because I’m pretty much his only foreign friend and he was put in the happy position of not having to dumb down his english in order to keep a conversation. It was so good to see him. He came over and saw the appratments and met everyone which was great. I think after those meetings and swimming in the companionship and conversation of a foreigner he knows, he made a decision to come out to see me more often. This ofcourse makes me very happy. It’s not just about having another foreign friend but someone that you’ve known before you came to China is very comforting. On Wednesday I had another night of catching up with friends. My chinese friend Jason was another on my rampage when I made a bunch of calls on Monday. We agreed to meet up after school again and once again go out for dinner. After school, I met him at the university and we walked to a little hole in the wall type of restaurant. We got this dish that was probably the best tasting thing I have ever had since I’ve been in china. Apparently the dish is native to the north west region of china in a province that I can’t remember. It was the pot of chicken and potatoes and all kinds of yummy yummy. It was really fantastic. Then him and I walked over to East Lake and played a couple games of pool. We had an audience for a while because we were speaking english of course and I’m this strange foreigner playing pool with a chinese person. Him and I had a good time though. At around 9:15 or so, I had to call it a night. I had to write two tests and I hadn’t even started outlining them. Needless to say, I was up until after 1am putting those bad boys together. On Wednesday during the day though, I stuck around a few minutes at lunch and then after not hearing anything, I went home because I wasn’t told by anyone that we had anything to do that afternoon. When I got home, Klaver told me that there was a meeting at 4 o’clock. I pretended that he didn’t say anything and in protest I just didn’t go to the meeting. Klaver and I returned to the school in the aftenoon. I opted to go to the office, mark a few books and then head over to kindergarten (here as known as K1). I later found out that they were trying to call me but I figured, if they really wated me to be there, then they would have found a better way to notify me. If Klaver wasn’t home, and just happen to mention it, I would have never known. Anyway, the meeting basically talked about the shit I mention in my meeting with Mr Ye. Basically they said that the show lessons were part of our contract but they will cut back to every other week as opposed to every week. You can’t fight city hall. But we found out through the grape vine that the chinese teachers were taken on a trip last weekend and they never invited us. I asked Mr Ye about this in my meeting with him but I never got a response. In this meeting apparently they said that they didn’t think we would want to go and we may not have liked the traffic. My point was, you didn’t even bother asking and then giving us the option to accept or decline. You just chose not to invite us. apparently the Bartoloni brothers and Maya from the second branch school were invited and then disinvited for some reason. To make up for this, they are taking just the foreign teachers out to a hot spring resort on Saturday. It’s apparently somewhere just outside of Wuhan. Neither Matty stix nor myself are gonna go. Matty stix is jokingly but almost seriously not going out of protest and also, he’s not to thrilled with the idea. I just don’t want to cut into my party time tomorrow so I’m gonna pass. Besides, been there, done that. Next on the agenda, Matty stix had his meeting with Mr Ye. Basically, Matt followed up with everything I had to say and then added the fact that he felt like us foreign teachers weren’t getting any respect. We felt like we weren’t being treated like teachers at the school. He made it clear that we weren’t visitors and that we should be treated like any other teacher at the school. Also, he touched on the fact that communication had to be better between the school and us. He let him know that we understand that we are in a different country and there are a lot of things that we let slide but in some cases it’s just not acceptable. They had to understand that we are foreigners and there are somethings that we need of them. Whenever something important is coming up, there are whispers that we’re lucky to over hear between the co-teachers. Noone ever seems to notify us directly. Case in point, the meeting and the fact that it even existed wasn’t passed on properly. I never knew and if the other guys at our main school weren’t at school at the time, they wouldn’t have known either. Anyway, I think that’s enough bitching for the night. I have to go and get ready to party down. Tonight is CC with a BS chaser and then tomorrow, hopefully it’s Vox. Then I have a big day of scouting a new purse on Sunday and I’ll be meeting Harry for dinner after that.
TTFN